State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

AT&T estimated that wireless data growth on its network expanded 4,932% between the third quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2009, thanks to iPhone users. The surge in wireless data consumption has forced the carriers to look at all the options which can reduce the load on their networks. Wi-Fi (aka WLAN) and in-building wirless networks are important in this regard. A recent WSJ article talks about companies – InnerWireless and SpiderCloud which provide in-building wirless networks solutions.

One Silicon Valley start-up, SpiderCloud Wireless Inc., is introducing technology next week to take over the job of delivering either cellular or Wi-Fi signals to the smart phones or laptops of workers in the office.

The performance improvement is so dramatic, SpiderCloud executives claim, that some customers might choose to dispense with desk phones—letting employees rely on cellphones alone.

Other companies, such as Texas-based InnerWireless Inc., already offer what the industry calls distributed antenna systems to handle wireless connections inside hospitals, hotels, government offices and other organizations.

Where other in-building wireless networks take months to install and are mostly suited to large companies, SpiderCloud says its technology is inexpensive enough for small companies to deploy—and can be installed in a weekend rather than taking months.

It includes small devices called access points—installed near the ceiling in an office—that communicate with laptops or smart phones. A specialized server manages how those devices communicate with each other and the Internet.

Mike Thelander, an analyst with the firm Signals Research Group, said other in-building systems route a call between two people in the same building outside to the wired portion of a carrier’s network, which is also burdened with heavy traffic.

SpiderCloud’s system would connect those people directly, inside the building, and offload external traffic directly to the Internet—better reducing the carrier’s data load.